WOODY Allen is not the only one who finds Scarlett Johansson "criminally sexy". Men have long gone weak at the knees at the mention of her name. But now it seems women too are bowled over by the star's perfect skin and voluptuous figure. Proving not every woman is in thrall to the starving waif look, readers of Glamour magazine have put her at the top of a poll to find the world's sexiest body.

Johansson can add the accolade to her burgeoning collection: the Esquire poll that judged her the sexiest woman alive, for example. And the FHM one that handed her the same title. Not to mention the glowing tributes from the aforementioned Allen, who adopted her as one of his many muses; producer Art Linson ("she has that look that pulls you right back in time"); and a stream of journalists who compare her to Marilyn Monroe while gushing about her luxuriant blonde hair and sulky mouth.

Indeed, there are few who haven't fallen under her spell since she first found fame at the age of 17 as a young girl who captivates an ageing actor in Sofia Coppola's Lost In Translation.

None of this adulation fazes Johansson, who is entirely at ease with her role as a sex symbol. "I have people coming up to me all the time telling me how sexy I am and that I am their favourite sex symbol," she has said. "I've sort of got used to it. As a woman I'm pretty comfortable with my sexuality. I think I was born with a few advantages and I make the most of them."

Of course, Johansson - who has made more than 20 movies, and has a Bafta and two Golden Globe nominations to her name - is much more than just a pretty face. At the age of 22, she has a CV to rival actresses twice her age. In addition to her film roles she has modelled for Louis Vuitton, been the face of L'Oreal and starred in the videos for Bob Dylan's 'When The Deal Goes Down' and Justin Timberlake's 'What Goes Around (Comes Around)'.

Her list of ongoing projects is mind-boggling. As well as starring in two forthcoming films, The Nanny Diaries and The Other Boleyn Girl, she is designing a range of clothing for Reebok, releasing a CD of Tom Waits songs and trying out for a part in a Broadway production of South Pacific.

A serial monogamist, Johansson has been equally prolific on the boyfriend front. Having once said she would never date anyone under 30, she has been linked with a string of older men including Patrick Wilson, 33; Jared Leto, 39; Benicio Del Toro, 40; and 29-year-old Josh Hartnett, her co-star in Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia. She denies rumours of a fling with Timberlake, but apparently spent the Easter weekend with Alanis Morissette's ex-fiance Ryan Reynolds, sparking a flurry of stories about her "new romance".

Woody Allen fell for Johansson hook, line and sinker (although their relationship is platonic). Rumour has it that while making his movies Match Point and Scoop, he expended much of his directorial energy trying to find excuses for her to take her clothes off.

Women like Johansson because, in a world obsessed with size zero, she revels in her curves. But the real reason her appeal is all-encompassing is that her unconventional looks are allied to a sharp intelligence and feisty attitude absent from so many other A-list actresses.

Contemptuous of the public's fascination with the minutiae of the lives of celebrities, she takes an interest in politics, campaigning for Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election and promoting Red, the Bono-endorsed Aids charity.

Savvy and socially engaged, her only downfall may be that some people find her intimidating. "It's hard to be around a beautiful young woman who is wittier than you are," as Allen puts it.

Johansson has eschewed the glitz of Hollywood for a low-key life in New York's Greenwich Village, where she prizes her privacy. Yet she can be disarmingly frank about her sexual experiences: she once boasted about having sex with Latino actor Del Toro in the lift at the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles (although she later claimed to have been joking).

Then, last year, while in a relationship with Hartnett, she startled the establishment by admitting she had an HIV test every six months. "One has to be socially aware," she said.

She often refers to her breasts as "my charms, my leading ladies" and has never been shy of taking her clothes off for roles. Lost In Translation opens with a lingering shot of her bottom in sheer pink pants, while she complained that the problem with her one flop, The Island, was that the director Michael Bay had stopped her doing a topless scene.

Both her determination and her broad-mindedness are the products of her liberal upbringing in New York. One of four children (she has a twin brother, Hunter) she was raised by her Danish father Karsten, an architect, and mother Melanie, a pushy film producer of Polish Jewish descent who once took all her children to auditions at a casting agency.

Named after Gone With The Wind heroine Scarlett O'Hara, Johansson says she came out of the womb wanting to act and went to the Professional Children's School in Manhattan. She first trod the boards in an off-Broadway play, Sophistry, with Ethan Hawke. In 1996 - after her parents' divorce - she became the star of the Sundance Film Festival with her performance as an 11-year-old girl who runs away from a foster home to be with her older sister in Manny And Lo.

As a result, she won the part of Grace, a teenager who loses her right leg in a riding accident in The Horse Whisperer, directed by Robert Redford, who described her as "13 going on 30".

Perhaps it was this maturity that prevented her from self-combusting like so many other child stars. Where Drew Barrymore, Macaulay Culkin and Britney Spears trod the well-worn path to self-abuse and rehab, Johansson has never so much as been pictured falling out of a taxi. She may have dated the odd bad boy, but when it comes to red-carpet appearances, she is always the one stepping out in the classiest frock and most chic hairstyle.

Most of Johansson's career choices have been shrewd: Girl With A Pearl Earring, The Black Dahlia and Ghost World all tapped into her instinctive, unaffected style. In recent months, however, a slightly sour note has crept into some film critics' assessments of her attributes.

The words "diva", "spoiled" and "going to her head" have all been used. She had better be on her guard. It would be a shame if all the public adulation was to strip her of the approachability that made her popular in the first place.

• While filming Match Point in London, Johansson is said to have become close to Lord Freddie Windsor, left, the son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.

• "I've read a lot of things about myself and think: 'Wow, that girl sounds really saucy'." Johansson on the surreal experience of finding out what she has been up to in the newspapers.

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